Use the ... photograph to launch today's write (To see the photo, navigate to: http://www.carolyndekat.com/april13.htm but do it after you read. See if you can guess what she's talking about.)

They are so amazing. There are four, place carefully, and they are smaller than the bright green leaf that has somehow been plucked from the tree and rests off to the side. They look old, as if they had been painted pale blue. The paint is faded in places and chipped away in others leaving brown spots with jagged edges. I want to reach out and feel what the outside is like. It looks smooth, but it's hard to tell with the mottled coloring. I wonder why they are this color. The brown flecks are almost the color of the twig bed, and the blue sort of looks like sky with high cirrus clouds drifting over a sunny springtime sky. Perhaps if a preditor thought that if it went any further it would fall through the sky, perhaps it would leave these alone, but it would have to be an almost blind preditor who could see in color. Otherwise who cares if it's blue and brown? Someday I'll have to ask someone who knows why these are blue and brown.

I am so lucky to get to watch these out my bedroom window, and even luckier today that their Mama has decided it's warm enough to leave for a few minutes while I'm not stuck behind a desk at school. With my binoculars it's like I'm right down on the branch there beside them. I have a second story window that looks down on a young oak that my father keeps threatening to cut down because it's way too close to the house; he keeps having to prune branches back so that they aren't scraping the side of the house like some huge skinny claws, especially on dark nights when the sound even gives him the willies. Today though I'm grateful that it's here and that it provides a home for some fellow creatures. I hope I get to see them when they are new, and how they change and learn as they grow, until they "fly the coop" like my big brother Samuel did last summer. I wonder if I will cry like my mother did? It's easy to get attached to things you help grow up is what Daddy told her, and it's hard to let them go, but if you keep them pinned down or caged up you ruin them.

I know that I won't be the one taking care of these creatures the way that Mom took care of Sam, and still takes care of me. But I do put food out on my window sill every morning before I go to school and every afternoon when I get home, so in a way, I've helped already. I'm sure that's why the pair decided to move into my tree. The food is great. Mom has a birdbath in the garden so there's plenty of water. The house blocks the south wind that can be pretty vicious this time of year. Can you imagine your house swaying several inches every time the wind gusts? I don't know how they stand it. Do they get sailors' legs like human sailors do? Or do they just scrunch down in a ball and hope they don't get seasick? That's what I would do. Oh, and then what about the rain! We had a monstrous thunderstorm two nights ago. I notice the house is harder to see now that the leaves are fully opened from their buds so I'm sure the leaves shield them a little, but still, raindrops are little things and I'm sure they have no trouble sliding over and through the leaves. Naturally their mom would cover them up, so maybe they never get wet. She must be able to tell when it's going to rain. My mom watches the weather. I wonder what she uses to tell that she soon must become a living, breathing, and above all warm umbrella.

So there, diary. Can you guess what I'm looking at out my window?